


Our Other Lives

by TriDom



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Heavy Angst, M/M, Prompt Fill, To a point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 17:39:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4531065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriDom/pseuds/TriDom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone is born with their soulmate's last words to them tattooed on their skin. It was the first sentence Chris learned to read, the first words he learned to write. He would never call himself a romantic, but through everything, those black letters kept him grounded and gave him hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Other Lives

**Author's Note:**

> I can't remember where the prompt was, so I can't give credit. I know I saw it on Tumblr. It was something along the lines of, "People have their soulmate's last words tattooed on them." So this was my Petopher take on it.

“ _We must’ve been brilliant in our other lives._ ”

Those were the words that had been written on the inside of Chris’s arm from the time he was born. It was the first sentence he learned to say, so young that he had no idea what it meant. He remembered saying it in first grade to a girl, whose name he didn’t remember, in a spill of show me yours and I’ll show you mine.

He remembered when it used to calm him down to trace it in the dark with his muscles sore from hard training. Even after he realized it wasn’t as obviously sweet as some peoples’ he still ran his thumb over it at night and focused on what his mom had told him, _“It’s in the context, Chris”_.

When Victoria was bitten and they were sitting on their bed, it all became real when he realized he was saying the words on her inner thigh without meaning to. “You did it for us”. When he shoved the knife into her chest, he waited for it. He paused for a few moments, and he waited to hear her say those words. He was so focused on it, he couldn’t even remember what her last words to him actually had been. He hadn’t been listening, because he was sure he already knew them. But he was wrong.

He thought of having the sentence taken off or tattooing over it. In the end, he didn’t, because it wouldn’t stop him from rubbing his thumb over it at night. It was so ingrained he barely realized how much he did it until the months after Victoria and each time he caught himself it was like tearing off a half-formed scab.

It took nearly a year, but he reconciled himself to the fact that he loved her and that’s all that mattered. The fact that her last words weren’t the ones there didn’t change any part of that. It made him feel less empty. He could see where one day, far in the future, it might even give him hope.

Then Allison died and his life became a black hole.

It wasn’t like with Victoria. There was nothing to live for, there wasn’t a reason to leave his bedroom, there was no reason to keep breathing, except that that’s what people did. They got up, they found things to do. They continued to breathe.

He felt like a man forcing a skin jacket to move. Nothing felt real and nothing in the world mattered. It felt morbid. He felt like a liar when he laughed.

In a French hotel room, he tilted his head against his pistol. When he opened his eyes for what he hoped would be the last time, he saw the small sentence on his inner arm and he read them again. He didn’t know why, but he read it repeatedly until he laid the gun on the carpet and pressed his forehead to the cool balcony glass.

When he could think again, he would rub the words and close his eyes. It would never be okay, but it was proof that eventually, it had the possibility of being better. So the days that he went into the world and acted like a functioning person, he would reward himself by going to his bed early and brushing it again and again until it lost direct meaning and just came to mean, the world wasn’t ending. It would eventually be better.

Returning from France was the worst decision of his life. Being near Allison’s friends was a constant reminder that she was rotting in a hole, but at least they kept him busy. They came in and out of his apartment asking questions or looking for help. Even with everything, he enjoyed John Stilinski’s kid most. He would come over and sometimes stay for hours in Chris’s study, like he was hiding from his friends. Any resentment he ever had for him died. The boy didn’t kill Allison. He was a victim and the deep black circles under his eyes were testament for it.

Melissa McCall started coming over once a week, the first time all but forcing her way through the door with John Stilinski in tow. Stiles promised he didn’t have anything to do with it. Chris thought he believed him, but he still hated Melissa and John at first and he felt petty for it, but they didn’t talk about their children and they made his kitchen less quiet, so he put up with it and occasionally when he laughed it felt like he might mean it.

He was home for less than a month when Peter Hale came to his door one night with a question for the kids. Somehow, he stayed. They drank bourbon at Chris’s kitchen island, with Chris standing in his sleep pants, and Peter sitting on a stool. They drank until they were dizzy. They didn’t mention that Chris’s sister killed his entire family and ruined his life. They didn’t mention anything serious.

It became regular without them setting it in stone, but Chris found himself waiting late at night for the noise of Peter knocking. It came a few times a week and they would sit on his couch, watching TV and they would bitch. He didn’t feel bad about bitching with Peter. He didn’t care if he sounded cynical, because no matter what he said, Peter said something worse and the few times Chris topped him, Peter laughed.

They were bitter, they were mean, but if two people in the world deserved to be, Chris thought it was them.

For a few hours every week, he stayed up and he felt less like he was wearing a meat suit. Against all reasoning, he started to smile when Peter laughed his arrogant sarcastic laugh.

He had been there for less than six months when hunters and a pack of wolves converged on Beacon Hills at the same time. It was bound to happen, but when it did, none of them were prepared. The pack of children and the outsider, supernatural and human, ended up in the preserve. Muzzle flash and roars tore through the trees. The smell of gun power filtered into Chris’s nose as he tried to find the kids in the fray and convince them to go home, get out, and let the outsiders settle it.

He never found them, but towards the end, when the gunshots were few and the roars less, he found Peter on the ground at the edge of a clearing.

“Wolfs bane?” Chris asked, ripping the side of his own shirt and pushing it to the bullet wound on Peter’s chest.

“Of course,” Peter said through gritted teeth. “Do you sons of bitches even understand how badly this hurts?”

“That’s why we use it.”

“Aren’t you just so funny,” Peter said, then he squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fingers in the dirt.

“I’ll go find one of the bullets.”

“There’s no point,” Peter said. “I’d rather not die alone if it’s all the same to you.”

Chris rolled his lips between his teeth. “Goddamn it, Peter,” he said under his breath, but pushed on the sucking wound in Peter’s chest harder.  There were air bubbles in it. He could hear one of his lungs hissing.

Peter laughed and blood poured over his bottom lip, clinging to his chin.

“I knew it was you from the first time I met you,” Peter said.

“Stop talking,” Chris said.  

“I thought that I had the worst life in the world for such a long time,” Peter laughed again. Spit or blood speckled below Chris’s eye. “Then yours,” Peter said, wheezing. “Yours just kept getting worse.” His laugh this time was weaker then he squeezed Chris’s wrist, pushing it away weakly. “Just stop. It’s no use.”

Chris let his hand drop and leaned back on his heels. Peter’s face was white washed in the dark, the blood was all black. He didn’t know his eye color, but right then, they looked gray and they were held on him. Then Peter smiled.

“The world has such a sick sense of humor, Christopher,” Peter said quietly.

“Yeah it does.”

Peter took another deep breath. When he exhaled wolfs bane spattered like tar from his nose. His eyes tightened at the corners then his fingers dug into Chris’s jacket sleeve. Panic creeped into Chris’s chest. Peter was right, it was no use and now his house would be quiet again.

“What do you think of me?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“Humor me, Argent,” Peter said, his eyes squeezing closed. “Please.”

Chris pressed his hand to Peter’s chest again, because he couldn’t do nothing even when he knew it was useless.

“I think,” Chris shook his head and pressed hard until he could feel Peter’s pulse, irregular and too fast. “I think you were a good person and then you had it stomped out of you. Repeatedly.”

The creases around Peter’s eyes softened.

“And that you’re too smart for your own good.”

Peter laughed again then he started to cough. Something thick broke loose in his chest, Chris heard it. By the time, Peter leaned back against the tree again, his entire lower face was black and tar clung to his palm that he had held over his mouth.

“I imagined hearing that for so long. It’s so strange to know this is how it goes.”

Chris frowned as Peter closed his eyes for a long moment. His heart was slow. Each beat felt like it might be the last one. Chris looked at the bullet wound before covering it again. Peter’s eyes were barely open when he looked up again.

“Every single thing was against us.”

Chris’s stomach cooled as Peter took his hand and pressed his tacky lips to his palm.

“We must’ve been brilliant in our other lives.”

Chris stilled and the corner of Peter’s mouth hardly turned up. It was just a tick. It went nowhere near his eyes as his whole body moved as he swallowed.

His heart stopped with his eyes still barely open. Chris pushed fingers to the side of Peter’s throat and felt for his pulse even when he knew it was useless. Then because he couldn’t not, he cut open the sleeve of Peter’s jacket. It wasn’t there, so he cut open the other with shaking hands and the small sentence was there in tight neat script.

Chris grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled Peter against his shoulder. His eyes burned at the corners and he felt stupid. He didn’t know Peter. Not really, but it didn’t matter. He pressed his lip to his shoulder and tightened his hold in his jacket. He rocked Peter’s dead body without realizing what he was doing, and didn’t stop after.

No one came to check on them. There was on one to care. There were no one’s first, second, or tenth thought. That was fine. They were kids. Some of them had had hard lives, but none of them had hit this low. They didn’t have enough years to be at this point, to know that when life was finished with them, it could leave them entirely without hope.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of an accompanying piece, another Petopher last words prompt, but happier. Still bitter sweet.


End file.
